Game Design

Giving up on the “1P Strategy Game”

I’ve long had this vision of the “1P (one player) digital strategy game”: a system that you can play over and over again, that has a match structure with a win/loss outcome, that has interesting decisions, that has a ranking system more comparable to an online matchmaking or Elo than a typical “Easy/Medium/Hard” style difficulty …

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Diablo: Immortal and Aesthetic Gacha-ism

  Nobody defending the game seems to understand why the monetization is bad. Governments aren’t banning this game because they care about p2w or competition. Its being banned because its literally dangerous and predatory. from DiabloImmortal Above is a reddit post complaining about the moral and ethical problems with gacha games. This is very valid …

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Space Narratives: A Map Randomizer Denounces Map Randomization

I got my start in game design doing traditional Rogue-likes. My first game was 100 Rogues(now sadly rendered unplayable due to a combination of iOS updates and a long story involving legal rights), very much a typical turn-based Rogue-like, somewhat inspired by Shiren the Wanderer but with character abilities more along the lines of Diablo …

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Randomness, and “Random Value Absorption Thresholds”

Randomness is very important in game design! This is because randomness allows us to make the game state larger and more complex, without overwhelming the player with too much information and therefore calculation. I’ve been writing about randomness for over a decade at this point, but this article represents my latest, most updated views on …

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“Pick 1 of 3” is a missed game design opportunity

When you’re offered a handful of powers that are highly coupled, and there’s no restriction on picking one over the other, the choice is obvious. If the powers are loosely coupled the choice will be random/arbitrary. In either case, it’s not going to be an interesting decision in my opinion. If you missed it, over …

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